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Kenya

Struggle to save baby Bhakita goes on, albeit grindingly

The doctors further said Bhakita’s condition was sustainable as she was not in any distress associated with heart failure or breathing complications.

In their view, with the medication, Bhakita will live beyond six months.

“Multiple saturation readings have varied between 80 to 85 percent. The child is not in congestive heart failure. There is no respiratory distress and she is accepting feeds well,” Max Health Care Super Speciality Hospital Director Dr Kulbhusna Dagar explained.

On further tests, doctors discovered that Baby Bhakita’s lower part of the body had turned blue.

Initially, doctors in Kenya had said once her body turned blue, her organs would eventually collapse.

But the doctors in India prescribed medication for one year that would contain the situation to keep Bhakita alive by ensuring there is oxygen flow in her delicate body.

“Because we had been told here in Kenya that she has to undergo an operation within six months before her body turns blue, when went to India we were given medication that will contain that condition including the turning of blue in her body so that that blue does not become too blue, until when she is one year to undergo the operation,” her mother explained.

Bhakita who is six months old now will require monthly reviews by cardiologist who will send a report every three months to her doctor in India.

The doctor in India will then analyse her reports which will help him determine her first surgery in six months time.

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Due to the multiple heart defects, the doctors said Bhakita will have operations in three phases – the first when she is one year old, the second at four and the third one at four-and-half years old.

Bhakita’s mother who said she owed her daughter’s trip to India to well-wishers said she spent about Sh500,000 out of the Sh1.6 million donated to her.

She said it was also her first time to enter a plane and throughout her flight to India, her mantra was for God to ensure Bhakita returned to Kenya alive.

“I was scared it was first time to be in a plane, I was worried about Bhakita’s condition because I had been told she had low oxygen,” she recalled.

“But throughout the flight, I prayed very hard, I told God ‘because you helped me, Kenyans contributed and gave me money and we got enough money within three days to take Bhakita to India for the surgery, I only prayed to God that we come back with Baby Bhakita alive. I said even if she has to die. It is better she dies in Kenya than me coming back without her.”

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